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Thoughts on Foxconn strike

By Yao Shujie: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, October 9, 2012

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Workers attend to electronic parts at a Foxconn plant. [File photo]

A strike involving 3,000 to 4,000 employees took place at the Zhengzhou Foxconn plant last Friday, read American non-profit organization China Labor Watch website. The site also suggested that this strike might exert a negative influence on the iPhone 5 sales.

An anonymous employee stated that the strike was a result from both having to work overtime on the National Day as well as failing to meet the high working standards. Foxconn requires high quality products, yet employers provide no specific employee training and therefore the pressure on the plant's workers increases relentlessly.

The workers participating in the strike were mostly employed within the department of OQC (Outgoing Quality Control). During the strike itself, quality inspectors and workers clashed and the former received several beatings. However, the plant's management saw no reason to take effective measures regarding the original reasons for the strike and simply shut down most iPhone 5 production lines on October 5.

Li Qiang, the China Labor Watch executive, indicated that the strike was caused by the tremendous pressure put on Foxconn employees. Li also stated that, considering the rising benefits assigned to Foxconn Company, the problems of working conditions and social welfare would become sharper in the future.

As far as I'm concerned, the Foxconn strike represents more than a clash between the employers and the employees alone. It represents a completely different attitude towards employment and reveals several deep-seeded problems and loopholes within in China's industrial make-up and economic development.

China is facing the challenge of an aging population. The nation is considered to have entered an era of "getting old before getting rich." In the future, this shortage in labor force will become more and more of a headache for labor-intensive industries.

Secondly, the generation of youngsters born in the 1990s has nothing in common with their parents in regards to their perception of employment. Therefore, when faced with injustice, they will, by any means, stand up to their employers. Relations between employer and employee are set to become increasingly strained.

On a next note, employers are ought to change their cliché of exploitation. The strike has told us that the generation of the 1990s will not readily compromise as most of them are well-educated with significant savings stored away for them by their parents. Aside from this, and because they are aware of working conditions in the rest of the world, they will never be job-salvers who are fully constrained in one position.

Some final food for thought then: Both our government and employers should learn a lesson from the events at the Foxconn plant.

What can the government do?

(1) Create fundamental living conditions for the employees;

(2) Provide good conditions for their children' education;

(3) Offer favorable conditions for public health services and pension care.

What can the employers then do?

(1) End up the age of pursuing high profits and to provide the employees with higher salaries and less work hours;

(2) Offer training opportunities for employees;

(3) Emphasize scientific innovation and improve productivity

The Foxconn strike reflects the obstacles that are still scattered across the course of China's transformation from a labor-intensive to an innovative economy. What's more, it suggests that the transition is both inevitable as well as indispensable. In the wake of the reform and opening-up policies, great things have been achieved over the past three decades, yet some problems may now still become increasingly prominent. Some experts point out that in a time of global industrial restructuring, China should seize the opportunity to realize its own industrial transformation and upgrading.

Author Yao Shujie is a well-known economist at the University of Nottingham.

The article is translated by Zhao Hui.

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